When “眠” fills a head
Why it is in the set
Sleep is the one thing in the set that everybody wants and almost nobody arranges properly. It is also funny in a way that does not depend on culture: telling someone their head is 40 percent sleep reads the same in Tokyo and in Toronto. It was an easy choice and it is one of the most frequently drawn characters on the site.
What a head full of it looks like
The calculation you do at eleven at night about how many hours are left. Reading the same paragraph three times. Having opinions about your pillow. A head led by 眠 is not necessarily tired, but it is spending real processing power on the subject of being tired.
Words that use it
睡眠 (suimin, sleep as a thing you get), 不眠 (fumin, sleeplessness), 冬眠 (toumin, hibernation), 安眠 (anmin, peaceful sleep), 眠れない (nemurenai, cannot sleep). 冬眠 is also used, half jokingly, for a person who stays indoors all winter.
Kanji it turns up with
休 (rest) and 暇 (free time) are in a different group but behave like relatives. When 眠 leads and 忙 (busy) is second, the two are contradicting each other, and the quip usually says so.
Where “眠” comes from
The eye radical 目 on the left, with 民 on the right for the sound. An eye, and a sound: the eye that has closed.
民 on its own means the people or the populace, but here it is doing no work beyond carrying the pronunciation MIN. This is how most kanji are built, and it is worth knowing: roughly four in five are a meaning part plus a sound part.
Japanese distinguishes 眠る (nemuru, to be asleep) from 寝る (neru, to lie down to sleep). You can 寝る for an hour without ever 眠る.
A line you might get for “眠”
“Running on four hours and pretending otherwise.”
Count the “眠” in your own headOthers in “Appetites”
“眠” is filed under “Appetites”. These are the rest of that group.
The 36 kanji
This is entirely a joke and has nothing to do with any real person.